


There is a Boy in the Woods

by chanting_lotus



Series: There is a Boy in the Woods [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24182605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanting_lotus/pseuds/chanting_lotus
Summary: There is a boy in the woods, the children say. He creeps along the trees next to a black wolf.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: There is a Boy in the Woods [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760419
Comments: 28
Kudos: 204





	There is a Boy in the Woods

There is a boy in the woods, the children say. He creeps along the trees next to a black wolf. 

There are no wolves in California. This is how the mothers and fathers have learned to respond. A mountain lion would never come so close, and it must have been a trick of the forest. 

The children don’t say anything back. They know what it means to be an adult—to close your eyes to all that you don’t want to see. The mothers won’t see because they refuse to look and the fathers won’t look because they refuse to see. The children talk to themselves, instead. 

There is a boy in the woods, the children say. He creeps along the trees next to a black wolf. 

He has blood on his hands, one girl says imperiously. The children do not know if she means she has seen the blood on his hands or if he has killed. They think it does not matter; it is probably both. 

\--

When the Sheriff hears about the boy in the woods, he always pauses. He leans close to whoever is speaking, gives them all of his attention. He never asks where they saw the boy. He doesn’t ask how he looks. He just listens. 

The mothers speak about the Sheriff often. How young he is to be in charge. How sad it was that he came into office after the last one was killed in a fire. 

No one talks about how uncommon house fires are. No one says that to have two fires in less than ten years, killing two families, is unheard of in a small town. Everyone calls them a tragedy of an accident. 

He is a good Sheriff, the mothers hasten to add. It is how he managed to keep the office when elections rolled around. 

One mother would lean in, a smile curved on her red lips, and say that his looks certainly helped. The rest would laugh. The conversation moves to safer topics. 

\--

The vet rarely hears about the boy in the woods. His clients are animals—they do not speak on the things that they see. But their owners would sometimes bring in their children. He would catch a soft bicker between the children, on if the boy’s clothes were always red or if something happened to them. If it was blood. 

The parents would cough politely. They’d inquire with the vet over his young apprentice. Where did the boy go? 

The vet smiles, which is a rare occurrence for him. He went out of state, he explains. There were better schools far away. There were better vets to be an apprentice to. 

He never says the last part. 

The parents would stand too close to their pet, close enough the vet felt his space was invaded. The boy would have been comfortable here. The parents say that it’s a shame. He was always good with animals. 

He was. The vet finishes giving the dog its shot. He is. 

\--

There is a boy in the woods, a child says to his nurse. He has yet to learn that adults will not listen to him. His mother spends too much time with her friends and his father spends too much time at the office. No one has told him that there are no wolves in California. 

The nurse pauses. She is wrapping up his arm. The boy had fallen off his swing, his mother too preoccupied with the woman next to her to be watching too closely. His mother is on the phone, in the waiting room. It is just the nurse and the child. 

There is no boy in the woods, the nurse says. Her voice is firm. 

The child tells her that he has seen the boy. That he knows there is one, and he follows a black wolf. He thinks that maybe the nurse will teach him the lesson his parents have failed him.

Instead, the nurse finishes putting his arm back together. She tells him, there is no boy in the woods. The boy is a young man now. He was a boy too many years ago. She does not tell him there are no wolves in California. 

The child does not know the difference between boy and young man. He will continue to say that the person in the woods is a boy. 

\--

The mayor is the youngest the town has ever had. The children also think she is the prettiest. Her hair is cherry-red, and she always wears pretty dresses. 

She visits the school and reads to the children. Many young girls want to be her, and many young boys pretend that she is gross. They don’t know how to express admiration for someone unlike them yet. They will learn. 

Sometimes the mayor stays after reading time and talks to the teacher. They are friendly to each other, but not friends. The children know the difference. 

If the mayor hears one of the children mention the boy in the woods, her attention goes to them. Unlike the Sheriff, she asks where the child saw them. She crouches down next to the child, makes them feel important, and inquires how the boy looked. 

He always has so much dirt on his face, a girl with pigtails giggles. She does not understand why this might upset the mayor. It is nice to have the prettiest mayor’s eyes on her. 

The teacher will interrupt then. The mayor stands back up to thank the teacher, they shake hands. She does not make the teacher feel important like she does the students. The teacher will take the girl with pigtails aside today, to tell her that it is not kind to lie to the mayor. 

The girl will say that she was not lying. The teacher will not listen to her, but that is because she is an adult. 

If anyone were to follow the mayor, they’d find her that night where the children told her they saw the boy in the woods. She’d be wearing tennis shoes, something that the children weren’t sure she had ever owned. There would be a box in her hands, and she’d carry it into the woods. 

If anyone were to follow the mayor, they’d find the box full of food and clothes. There was a pack of baby wipes. 

The box would be gone by morning. 

\--

The children know the boy in the woods is real and true. It is fact. There is a boy in the woods. A black wolf walks alongside him. 

The teenagers see him more as urban legend, something once true that is no longer. The teenagers would sometimes get drunk off of their parent’s forgotten beer. They would be in small group, laughing and the boy in the woods would be brought up. 

One teenager would laugh and say that it is a tale, something like Bigfoot or the Tooth fairy. Something false that spreads from child to child with little help at all. 

Another would argue that he had seen the boy. That he had followed the boy. Even the teenager who thought it was fake would quiet at this. He followed the boy and the wolf, until he lost sight of them. He tried to keep going, but the wolf was there. The wolf had red eyes. 

It was not part of the tale, not something known as fact. The teenagers would be silent for a moment, broken by a scoff or laugh from the non-believer. Those that weren’t sure, those that were on the cusp of adulthood, would laugh as well. 

The teenager wouldn’t defend himself, suddenly uncertain in his memory. 

There might be one or two, nursing their first beer, that would sit still. They wouldn’t laugh. They knew the boy in the woods existed. But there was no point in explaining it to those who didn’t or couldn’t remember anymore. 

\--

There is a man who owns a gun shop. His face is weary and lined. Very few children ever meet him, his job is to sell to adults. Mostly fathers come in. They talk on the best kind of bullet for deer hunting. 

The man talks to them but keeps them at arm’s distance. He is invited often to cookouts by the fathers. He always declines. 

At the cookouts, guns safely tucked away, the fathers gather around the grill. Sometimes their children are with them, shrieking through the yard. The wives are making sides in the kitchen. 

One will say that it is a shame about the man in the gun shop. 

They all know what the shame is. He is a father who is no longer a father. 

Another notes that he had left the town before, and why did he come back? The father doesn’t think he could stay where something so awful happened. 

The fathers will shrug and mutter amongst themselves. Talking is not their strong suit. 

If it was, they might have asked the man. The man wouldn’t tell them, but it is to keep watch over the woods. 

He could say it was to protect the boy in the woods, with the wolf. They need it—they deserve it.

The fathers would laugh, tease him mercilessly about how he believed a child’s tale. The man would shrug and the easy acceptance of their disbelief would make the fathers uneasy. 

It is good that talking is not their strong suit.

\--

There is a patient, at the hospital in the woods. Most children don’t go out there. There is a family with a daughter who lives there. The family has three other children, who on Saturday would climb into their car and make the drive out to the hospital.

The patient rarely gets allowed out to the sun. But Saturdays are visiting days, and every person who lives there gets to come to the yard and talk with their visitors. 

The patient never has any visitors. 

The children are uncomfortable around their sister. She cries too often, and often misses clumps of her hair. When their parents visit, they spend most of the time holding her. The children can’t talk to her, for she never responds. 

They spend most of the visiting time in the yard, away from their sister. The orderlies, all dressed in white, keep a careful eye over them. They will not be harmed here.

The children have met the patient once or twice before. He is one of the few here who has eyes that are present. They can tell, when looking into the blue, that he is smart. He is someone who can keep a secret. 

There is a boy in the woods, they tell the patient. 

Oh, he responds. It is not much of a response, but it urges the children to continue. It is the first time for these three that an adult has not told them there are no wolves in California. 

He follows a black wolf, the children tell him. The wolf is large. The wolf is his. 

They are each other’s, the patient says. They have been each other’s longer than you know. 

The orderlies take him away before they can ask what he means. 

\--

There is a hunter. Any hunter, take a pick. They all dress the same—camouflaged and carrying a rifle. They always wear a hat, and they always have some fat to their gut. For some, it is a mark that they eat what they kill. For others, it is because they drink too much beer. 

He is hunting late, moving through the underbrush as quiet as his boots will allow him. Below him, in a ravine, he hears the sounds of flesh hitting flesh. There are gasps and moans beneath him, and he knows what is happening. 

The hunter remembers what is was like to be young, the woods a hidden place to let passions out. He looks once as he backs away. 

It is two men. One is large, overpowering the other. He covers the little one near completely, hair a messy black. They are both covered in dirt, like they wear it always. They move more like animals than people in their mating. 

When he comes home, a duck in his hunting bag, his daughter will talk about a boy in the woods. She’ll say he stays with a black wolf and he will think on the large man’s hair. He’ll think of the blankness he saw in the eyes of the one beneath, like a wild doe. 

There are no wolves in California, he’ll say. 

\--

There is a woman in college, she lives with her boyfriend. They decided to go away from their small town for the experience. 

They’ve always planned to go back. 

They’ve been together since high school, and when they come home for Christmas, they listen to the younger cousins talk about the boy in the woods. Talk about the wolf that cannot be in California. 

The couple will not argue when the parents hush the cousins. They will not come to their defense. But, in the quiet of the woman’s childhood bedroom, they will talk about the boy. 

They knew him, when he was truly a boy. 

They knew the wolf, too. 

There is a boy in the woods, they’ll whisper in the dark. His name is Stiles. He was pack mate. 

He will not leave the side of a black wolf. The wolf’s name was Derek. He was pack mate, too. 

In the morning, they will travel to their college. The woman might see the flash of red in the woods as they speed away. The car will not slow. Maybe they will make plans to not come back.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two hours because it would not get out of my head.


End file.
